Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Apologies Plus Jerryrigged Sandbox Dungeon Construction Notes

First, to people who are e-mailing in apologies--

Since Mandy's still in the hospital we may not be able to answer every e-mail coming in immediately--but, in general, folks sending apologies for supporting, retweeting or otherwise signal-boosting Tom Hatfield's now-discredited smear job on us:We appreciate that you are apologizing, that's big of you and provides an all-too-rare example of these dumb online things resulting in a little self-examination. However, we do ask that if you're making an apology you make it public.We realize that most of this is down to people just wanting to reflexively back up their friends and that's not entirely a bad thing to do--but the mistake was public, so the attempt to fix it needs to be as well.A situation where dozens or maybe hundreds of isolated trans- kids on Tumblr think their favorite game hates them just because of Tom Hatfield is not ok. And you can make that right--but not with a message that just sits in my or Mandy's inbox and doesn't go out in the world.Thanks.P.S. For those who asked: Mandy's doing alright, second feeding tube in, in less pain today but still under observation. We've been able to pay a few games via G+ and watch some movies so it's been alright. Thanks to everybody who ran those. Also: the new wheelchair did finally show up and is awesome.

And Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Program…

As much as possible I try to hand-draw dungeons for the home group--but for the online game I use alotta tricks.

Chris H (human monk) recently out together a list of all the dungeons and fortresses that've come up in that online game in the past couple years. Since it's a sandbox game and most I thought it might be fun to run through them and how I threw them together.

Jackalman Fortress in Cobalt Reach
*gnolls, actually

Construction: Exterior was from the random fortress generator--inside was like a circle with a handful of squares in it based on one of those sketchy "fortress with (number) (kind of dude) lead by a (number) level (alignment) (sorcerer/fighter) descriptions in Carcosa.

Fortress of the guy we turned in to a Lich*--(Baron Vorgus)
*demilich, actually

Construction: Ditto, exterior was from the random fortress generator- then made a tiny 3 level sketch map that connected to the Echo Palace (see below). Like 3 rooms had a special stuff, the rest was just whatever monsters were in the warband.

Result: Joined besieging army, then took over.

Library of the Snakemen

Construction: This was barely a place--just the idea of a vertical shaft library with Librarians/serpentmen/reptile women in it.

I've been away from gaming for a bit but now I'm meandering my way back in... only to find this ridiculous bullshit taking place. It's a colossal disappointment to see the effort and time that you've put into what is obviously a labor of love being repaid with such petty jealousy and preadolescent tribalism.

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